Monday, November 26, 2007

A Change of Heart

Okay, so I've been giving some thought to my last post.  I had an interesting conversation with Mom about why she doesn't journal, and she said something I'd never heard someone say.  "I'm afraid that if I write it down, I'll change my mind about it the next day, and what I've written will seem uninformed or wrong.  What if I disagree with myself?" 

Now, to this I replied, "The whole point is to disagree with yourself.  You can only write from where you are, not where you were or where you will be.  Tomorrow you will be somewhere else - maybe even someone else - and that's the fun of it.  Tracking how your feelings and beliefs changed is one of the major reasons to write, because no other chronicle can so accurately preserve your own journey."  For instance, I look at my posts from early 2007, and I don't even recognize the person who was writing to you.  I was drunk every night, I was smoking - I can still remember one night, smoking on the steps with Scott, where I blurted out my entire life story while shivering uncontrollably (a particularly low moment).  Or the time I walked in front of a tractor-trailer while yelling to Jess, "Why won't you love me for what I am?"  I'm not that person anymore.  But!  I *was* that person at one point, I've *been* that person, and so now when I look at my life and meaninglessly wish for it to be more interesting, I can look back and go, "I've had it more interesting, and it was really not that great."

So, the whole point of that introduction was this: I think I'd like to amend the vitriol of my last post.  It's hard for me sometimes, because I want my writing to be entertaining, so I never know how strong a viewpoint to take.  It seems like the stronger the opinion, the more it affects people and the more entertaining it becomes.  And I stand by much of what I wrote.

I think I was imagining some very particular scenarios in which I have interacted with strangers.  This weekend, as my grandparents and family asked me about my job, I realized that they weren't evaluating my worth as a person.  They were relieved to know that I was going to be okay.  "Martin is okay," I can hear them thinking.  "I don't have to worry about him anymore."  And they were genuinely excited, like I'd passed some big test, and the whole interaction went easier because of that newfound peace.  I still stand by my loathing of the "What do you do?" question.  It is an evaluative probe that enables us, unconsciously, to rank people.  "Oh you work at McDonald's?"  I can hear their social status careening in a ball of flames from here, and that shouldn't be the case.

I like Vicky's idea of asking questions that are interesting to the person you're questioning.  Think about how different the world would look if we actually cared that the questions we were asking were somehow relevant to the person we were talking about.  Now I want to know what those questions would look like so I can ask them.

And the marriage bit: you have to understand my context.  I'd just come from a weekend spent with Jessie's family at a funeral, so we interacted with an enormous number of older people who only knew us by the fact that we were getting married.  I was like, "Hello?  I am my own person, too."  When friends or co-workers ask about it I don't think, "Screw you for asking."   Well, okay, maybe sometimes, but not for the reason which I originally insisted.

So.  I am big enough to change my mind.  And I still hate that question, and will not ask it anymore.  And I will yell at you if I see you ask it, so be forewarned.  My new question is: "What are you interested in nowadays?"  Further revision to be expected.

Hope you guys are doing well.  This is post #99.  I wonder what the heck I'm going to write for #100...       

Martin

Thursday, November 22, 2007

The Curse of "What Do You Do?"

Hi.

Had an interesting conversation today that put a couple of things in perspective. I left it feeling glad I that I moved away from Pittsburgh and got a good job. I don't think most folks thought I had it in me, frankly. They see my forwardness about my own faults as an admission of weakness. Me identifying my own quirks, however entertaining they might be, sometimes works against me. Jessie translated it for me thusly at one point: "People think you're a joke because you act like you are one."

Of course you already know that, having read nearly 97 posts where I wrestle, hopefully humorously, with my faults and foibles (holy crap, we are having a party at 100). I try to find the things that are funny about me and around me and I take pleasure in identifying them. But what I realize now is that it came to a point where the people around me - faced with that penultimate annoying question of "What does Martin do exactly?" - cried out for a hero to save them from their seemingly baseless fandom.

Said hero is, namely, me. Employed.

I confess a bit of glee about having a job title that nobody understands. My description of what I do explodes out in a tornado of important-soundingness, a swollen tempest against the squalls of feigned interest that constitute most human interactions. I am an information architect. whoosh-BAMF! You are in a cloud of unknowing. My job title is so confusing it MUST make me more important than you. You're sorry you asked, aren't you? Now I'm not only useful, I must be more useful than YOU.

I have decided that this Americans pissing contest occurs because the vast majority of us are miserable and want to know that others are as miserable as we are. Haven't you ever noticed that little sag people get in their faces when you love what you do? That little jealous silence that follows where they either try to find something about that job that must be frustrating ("Oh, I'd never have the patience to do that...") or they just murmur something half-approving and change the subject?

I hate that in America, it doesn't matter what you do with your day so long as it involves working for somebody else. As long as you're employed somewhere, people can put you in their little "useful" box and interact with you. I could be writing the next "Rhapsody in Blue," but if I'm not pulling down a paycheck every two weeks I might as well be an old couch. People can't categorize you if you're not working. The most they can do is associate you with taxes and food drives, even if you're wearing Versace glasses and drive a nicer car than they do. I remember working for Apple 15 hours a week, making enough money to basically afford to park my car near the Apple Store, but because I had an answer to "What do you do?" that was concise and cool-sounding, people left me alone. Hell, they even respected me a little.

When you're independently wealthy, though, people don't care what you do. You could just go around peeing on children all day and if you had money no one would second-guess why you always have a Nalgene full of Crystal Light.

I notice the same need to categorize when I'm with Jess. Everyone, friend and stranger alike, wants to know when we're getting married. It's all they see when they look at us: People who are getting married. They don't see a teacher or an artist. They see unmarried people. And it's not just them "being nice." They want to know when we will get married so they can know how long they have to wait before they can put us in the little "Things I've Figured Out" compartment they have in their head. An engagement at least has a little drama associated with it, a chance things might not work out, go south, crash and burn. That makes people interested, but only in resolving that anxiety. I am convinced that, as humans, we like to think that the world can be categorized, can be predicted and controlled. The things we learn carve channels in our mind, and instead of making new channels we try and force all the water to flow through the old, i.e. "But I already dug this hole in the ground to bury you in!"

It makes me want to do random things. Scary things. Disappear for three days with no indication as to where I've gone. Wear a different wig for seven days and chart people's reaction. I have this fantasy, at parties, that I will make up a different answer to the question "What do you do?" for each person who asks.

Guest 1: "I didn't realize Martin was a marine biologist. He went to Cornell and everything."

Guest 2: "Marine biologist? I thought he was a nature photographer."

Guest 3: "Hey, did you guys hear? Martin is next in line to go to the International Space Station!"

Fuckers. What do you care anyway? If I tell you what I do, will that make you feel better? Try this question. It is so much better than "what do you do," and it starts a much more attractive conversation. Ask: "What are you excited about nowadays?" Go ahead. Try it. I promise the conversation will be rewarding. More rewarding than asking, "How can I categorize you today? Worthless, or worthwhile?"

Anyways, yes. I am doing this. I'm showing up on time to work. I'm doing a good job. I'm holding down a big-boy opportunity with aplomb. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised at the surprise and doubt of others. I certainly shared it. I'm still amazed I was able to transition this easily. And I feel like a bad, bad boy for posting something at 2 AM. WAY past my bedtime. Bad Martin. Bad.

Let's cut this crap that I need defended to anyone. I can take care of myself.

-m

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

On the Shoreline of a Crystal Sea

Dear Reader,

I’m back.

I might have gotten some molecules scrambled, passing through the thick mist that descended over my life the past few days, but can still move my fingers and feel my toes. It’s enough to keep on going, even though right now I am really hungry for some sunlight to burn off the fog of death.

Outside my window, while we were gone, Alexandria filled the trees along King Street with white Christmas lights. Jess and I had just come back from a weekend spent with death, with dark thoughts, my own rampant imagination putting every face I cared about in a coffin and burying them in the cold earth, and I can’t describe what it was like to come home and find our tree-lined street illuminated with a million twinkling stars hanging overhead. Jessie’s first thought was that she wished her Grandmother had seen it so illuminated, our new home warm, inviting, and timeless.

I kept telling myself that I shouldn’t have been so upset for someone else’s grandma. I mean, I have my own grandparents. Jess and I aren’t married. I knew Gran well but we’d only seen one another a precious few times. And yet I was a total wreck on the drive up, at the viewing, at the funeral. I cried, like I will for my own grandmother, for all the new memories I didn’t get to make. And now I’m sitting at work, and I feel different. Uncomfortable. Waiting. I feel like I could die at any second, or those around me could die at any second, like it’s a war being waged around me and my weapons are my breath and my heartbeat, and I have limited ammunition. As long as I can keep firing, I’ll live, keep the hunter at bay, but right now I feel persecuted, invaded, and unsure.

The worst parts of it are the big questions. You know the ones you asked as a kid? “Where do we go when we die? Will I get to see my family again? What will I look like as a spirit?” Yeah, well, they don’t go away. They get louder, angrier, more infuriating. Jess and I found ourselves asking them again, only this time we were furious at our inability to know. I wanted to torch the veil and peer beyond it, burn a hole in the not-knowing, the not-being-able-to-know of it. And then my rational mind, who is an unemotional problem-solver, said, “You know, the simplest way to explain Heaven is that we invented it to make ourselves feel better about dying.” And I had those kinds of thoughts, one after the other. I’d present my old answers, my ones featuring God and St. Peter and mystical gardens and saints and the smell of roses filling the bedroom – all the artillery my own grandmother gave me - and one by one they fell under the crushing weight of my disbelief. Religion was no help. All death did was ask questions for which I have no answer, and I feel like I’m vulnerable to attack.

So, it’s weird. This whole weekend has been weird. I saw her body. I touched her cold hands. I laid a flower on her casket. And yet it feels like she’s still alive, and all we buried was the car she was driving. Is it weird to say that it felt like she was at her own funeral? I got the image of her sitting in a chair, snoring, which is exactly what she would have been doing during the service. Jess said she felt like her grandmother’s hand was on her shoulder. I prayed to her to watch over Jessie. Part of me accepts that as perfectly true, and another laughs and goes, “You’re kidding, right?” I remind myself that I can’t explain, well, much of anything going on around me. You ask enough questions and you get to a point where not only do you not know, you can’t know. Mat called it the ant and the bulldozer. All the ant knows is that the ground is shaking. He doesn’t know why, nor can he. He’s just an ant (all I could picture was a little ant getting squashed by a big bulldozer that didn’t care at all, and the more I thought about it the sadder the analogy seemed). He can’t perceive the greater truth that the bulldozer is there to build a condo for people to live in, etc... etc…

Jess and I stopped at Mom’s house on the way back from Erie, and my sister and her kids were there, along with Derrick. I have the coolest nieces and nephews in the world. They are absolutely at that fun stage when their self-critical voices are an undeveloped squeak and they haven’t learned to be bashful about saying and feeling exactly what is on their mind. I was holding my niece Mariah (who delights in raising her arms, looking through you and saying firmly, “Up!”), and suddenly I started to tear up. I held her little soft body close to me, my hands as big as her whole back, and felt an overwhelming desire to laugh at all her jokes, applaud all of her goofy creations, and make her feel like she was the center of the whole, happy world. I must have glimpsed a little of what a parent or grandparent feels in that moment, this sense that you exist now to ensure this little life makes it up and out into the world. To hold new life after so much talk of death was like clear bells ringing out over a foggy morning. It seemed that much more precious, that much more urgent to do the things I felt like doing in my heart and most importantly to spend time with the people that I love. I’m glad the holiday is almost here. It gives me the perfect opportunity.

I held my new nephew, too. Sean Christian. He’s just a little bigger than my hand. He’s just learning to see, the first rays of light travelling from his eyes to his brain. I wonder what it is like, that constellation of information suffusing your waiting synapses, everything firing for the first time as though it had been waiting for eternity to do so. I got the image of Gran as a candle that, having burned brightly for a long time, went out and, hundreds of miles away, a new candle was lit, was just starting to perceive the brilliant lights of this world. Maybe that is what death feels like – a birth into a constellation of new light that cannot be seen with the eyes of this world.

I met with Mat on Saturday night. I headed over to Squill and met him for an impromptu meeting at Eat’n Park, Pittsburgh’s answer to iHop. We talked about death over chocolate cake and a bowl of chili. I didn’t agree with much of what he said, but in his defense I didn’t agree with much of what I was saying, either. I just felt completely out of sorts, wholly not myself, and was glad to have the company. He is a bright light himself, and he burned off much of the mist that had settled around me. My mom burnt off more the next morning, and today, sitting at work, I can feel it slowly lifting. I admit I’m excited to have the old sun rise again. I could use the sight of some familiar light on the new eyes that death has given me.

Your,
Martin

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Shirley

Jessie's grandma died last night.

I don't talk about death on the Captain's Blog. It's not a part of my world. It's not what I think about. It's not what I deal with.

Today, I was shaken. We were shaken. Hard.

I had a big long post about how the day unfolded, but I deleted it. Words seemed garish and inconsiderate. As I was writing, I looked up at the picture of my own grandparents I have at the foot of my bed, their faces slowly fading into sepia, and in that long moment I got the image of us all as leaves on a great tree, some budding, others green in their prime, gathering light; and still others are browns and reds and yellows, slowly loosening their connections to the branch until one night, dreaming of sunlight, they drift down, away from the others, to the unknown ground below.

The viewing is Friday. The funeral is Saturday. The worst part is Jessie's sadness, repeated like a prayer through thick tears. "I'm so sad, I don't know what to do, I'm so sad," and I, powerless, can only cry along with her.

Goodbye, Shirley. We love you.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

The Road to Damascus

Road to Damascus
n. a religious conversion; a revelation, especially about one’s self; in other figurative uses, denoting a change in attitude, perspective, or belief.

Hi!

Just got back from NYC. It's a five-hour drive up the East Coast, passing through the Jundland Waste that is Delaware and the farthest-point-from-the-bright-center-of-the-universe that is Jersey. $21 in tolls between here and Mark.

I mean, come on.

Mark, my brother, is living the actor's life: waiting tables, going to auditions, falling in an out of love, staying equal parts inordinately positive and on the verge of falling over. He is such a positive force, so fun to be around. His attitude towards work is incredible: he takes every job he gets, no matter how small, and makes it his own. Whether he's doing construction, washing dishes, acting, or waiting tables, Mark makes himself indispensable; every manager loves him, says "Mark is my guy." It's amazing. I've never been like that. In my other jobs, I always felt hired in spite of myself. Only Apple and this new job have been different, places where I was finally able to sink my teeth in and invest something. I'm getting a good reputation where I'm working now. It's the first time I've pushed myself to work hard, to constantly produce, to stay busy. I get there early, I stay late. It's weird. It's new. I like it.

I'm in kind of a pensive mood tonight. Jess and I were walking up our street after getting home late tonight, and there was a black man across the street talking to a guy on a mo-ped. He saw us, and the biker pointed as us, and the man came over, thanked us for not running away, and proceeded to give us this really intricate story of how he'd served 10-years in Virginia and now was trying to find his way to Damascus, MD. He had papers, highlighted for effect, and amounts written on the back of the page of how much he'd need to get where he was going (Metro, cab, bus).

I opened my wallet, saw $15 in there, and gave it to him. I should have just given him $5, but whatever.

Jessie asked me after if I had smelled the alcohol on his breath, too. Of course I had. I noticed the Nautica shirt, the fact that he was decently well-groomed. That's what got me - it was the contrasts, the desperation and the preparation, the breath and the papers, the absolute plausibility that this man was just trying to make his way somewhere, whether that was Damascus the place or Damascus the bar. I spent a good half-an-hour afterwards annoyed about losing $15. I'm writing this still annoyed. I mean, that's a lot of money. Not as much as one pays in tolls on the road to NYC, but still a lot of money. That's a whole Tricky Fingers CD (now available on iTunes because I rock). It was only a few weeks ago when I had less than $15 in the world, when I myself considered hawking CDs for gas money to get to Alex Bay.

And then it hit me.

I can work for 45 minutes and make that money back. Hell, I can write e-mails to my friends for 45-minutes and make that money back. I've spent nearly that long writing to you. Three weeks ago, $13.90 was all that I had in the world, and now I make that in the time it takes me to eat lunch. I mean, I'm no millionaire, but I also don't have to worry about what happens if I get sick, what happens if I want to get contacts, what happens if I need to pay my rent. This is the first time I've felt like I've got some buffer between myself and the realities of the world that doesn't consist entirely of my father. And dammit, it feels good. It feels really good. I've never felt it before. I want to keep feeling this.

If $15 is the toll I have to pay on the Road to Damascus, then so be it.

Anyways, I have to tell you all about our time in NY! Monday will be a slow day at work. I'll write then. For now, I'm going to forgive myself for being a gullible nice person, and be thankful that I have a job to go to that doesn't involve posing as an ex-con...

Your,
Martin

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

The Starship Martin

It's not often I get to embrace the geeky chic of my blog's title. In fact, I think it's good for the sake of humanity that I don't, at least not all the time. But I am about to unleash my inner-geek, the one that has spent hours on eBay looking at iMac G4's and fantasized as a child about owning a gyrocopter. Yes, I'm trying to decide, when I get money (Lord know when that will be), which Sideshow Weta toy to get: something from Star Wars, or from the Lord of the Rings.

Good. You're still reading.

I think many geeks have struggled with the Star Wars vs. LOTR question. I personally have resigned myself to feeling lucky to have both rich universes in which to play, and I've never been asked to choose in anything other than a theoretical, hypothetical "you're on a deserted island and you can only take one trilogy" kind of question. Now, however, a choice must be made. These things are obscenely expensive (hundreds of damn dollars) and carry a kind of geek chakra that can scarcely be ignored, but I can only afford one. Star Wars or LOTR. Darth Maul or Gandalf. Yoda vs. Dooku or Aragorn at the Black Gates. It's a hellish question I've been avoiding by doing ample research at work, using slow moments to research the figures in 360-degree animations. It's an agonizing choice.

Now, for those of you who think it is folly to spend more than $12 on anything related to a movie franchise, let me give you this example. Two years ago, I found out about Sideshow Weta from the LOTR website. I did a search on eBay and found an incredible Ringwraith statue. We're talking something ungodly cool - I fantasized about it on my fake fireplace, its red, sinister eyes and blood-soaked legs keeping watch over the living room. In 2005, the horse went for $300. eBay it now, however, and it goes for $800. For a statue of a fictional horse.

So the danger is two-fold: It appeals to my geek, and it appeals to my inner collector. Maybe having money will not be such a good thing after all. I was enjoying getting rid of excess stuff, and now I will be spending all my time picking up things like Star Trek: TNG on DVD and Master Replicas of lightsabers. Things could get very crowded very quickly. It could be a nightmare of geekish proportions. And now that I have an office, the allure of the things only grows stronger. "This would look great on my desk!" I'm already plotting to take my giant Yoda poster in. I took the lamp in to warm them up, but no one knows the truly dastardly dorky things I have planned for my little corner. They should be glad I lost my lightsaber-wielding Obi-Wan piggy bank that made noises whenever you put in a quarter.

Anyways, I thought it would be fun to post about something other than work, because obviously it's all I've been thinking about. My project manager told me today that I was doing a very good job! He even used an exclamation point. This man was in the navy, rides a motorcycle on the insane streets of DC, and came to work on Halloween dressed as a member of KISS, so for him to use that kind of punctuation really meant something to me. It was confirmation that I've been going about this the right way. What can I say - if I have to be there anyways, I'd rather be busy.

(also, if someone could please check the Martin for an invasion of the body-snatchers, that would be great. thanks.)

Martin

A Love Note from the Office

I moved my desk around today.  I turned it 90-degrees.  People came from all across the office to see my new setup.  "This is so nice," they said.  "It's really cozy!"  I can't tell if they're jealous or they just don't want me to be mad that I sit in a corner all day, but either way I found the attention highly entertaining. 

Isn't it funny how things that we would barely care about outside of work become this huge deal when we're at work?  It is fascinating to me how people change when they are here.  My favorite exchange is the awkward quick smile, the one that you give each other when you pass in the hallways, don't really have anything to say, but need some way to acknowledge each other.  It's hilarious.  People look like they're twitching.  I find myself doing it, too, trying desperately to think of something to say to this person I just met and know very little about. 

As you can tell, I'm not as busy as I was the past week.  There is no way I would have had time to write to you last week.  And, truth, I liked being busy.  It was such a change from the past, um, months.  Today is slow.  But that's a good thing.  It means I kicked butt so hard the past five days that I don't have anything left to do today.  My project is going to the graphics department, and untli they put it all together and it's time for us to do quality-control, there's not much for me to do.  I'm debating who to ask for more work.  I am definitely interested in staying busy.  It makes the days go faster.  It makes me feel like I should wake up and come.  Today I slept through all my alarms and still woke up in time to get here with no problem, but I know myself: I did that because I knew there wouldn't be as much to do today.  I have to stay feeling busy and productive and important or I'll start acting the opposite, and then I've sabotaged myself. 

The good news is that I'm better at playing the game of myself.  Am I the only person this crazy?

m

Monday, November 05, 2007

The Second Week

It it just me, or has everyone been talking about death recently?

I think just about every conversation I've partaken in recently has in some way referenced a sick, dying, or dead person. Some are ones in my own sphere: my grandmother, Jessie's grandmother, etc... while others are just amorphous relations, co-workers and the like. This guy fell out of a tree. This one is in the hospital. This one had to choose whether to live or die. Mat and I saw a woman get hit by a car on Saturday. She fell so close to Mat's car it's a miracle she didn't hit her head off of our fender. I thought of the tarot, how Death means change, and I wondered if the twisting seasons brought out the morbid side of everyone.

It's just a little darker at night, people. And the sun comes back.

I'm feeling strangely silent of late. When things are going well, there's not much to be said, and things are going well for me. I'm doing a good job at my new position. I am well-suited for the kinds of work they have me doing so far - it's a lot (and I mean a LOT) of asset-management and organization, which in my life I'm merely "meh." On a computer, however, I can make a folder with the best of them, and I've nearly mastered the art of alt-tabbing out of GChat in time for the VP to walk by. (I'm super excited about getting a new, smaller desk tomorrow that I can turn around so my back is no longer to the hallway, my computer screen exposed. I'm like a jumpy critter at work, squirreling away my conversations at a footstep or creak.)

It was only on Sunday morning, as I was puking up my stomach lining, that I reconsidered the amount I drank on Saturday night at the Halloween Party hosted by Tooch and Jeep. The party was so much fun, as all of their parties are, and from what I remember I had an excellent time. I was trying to figure out which made me sick: the quantity or the variety. I haven't handled vodka well since I OD'd on it in Florida seven years ago, and I had that, beer, and some kind of mulled wine which God did not intend to be chugged (think thick, cinnamon-y apple cider). On Sunday night, still sick, I wondered about whether I had hit that point when your body loses the will to put up with your poisons and gives you hell in order to change your behavior, but I seriously think the mulled wine is a more likely culprit.

It was good to come home this weekend, though it's a bittersweet experience now. The trips are such whirlwinds that you don't get to really experience anyone for a satisfying amount of time, and part of you expects people to drop everything and throw a parade that you've decided to grace them with your presence. Jess and I used to lament how people expected us to have no life of our own when they came home, and here I found myself wishing for the same thing. I'm home! Didn't you miss me? How did your world revolve without me in it? The truth of course is that it's only the first few days apart that feel long, and the rest jumble together until, when you reunite, it seems no time has passed at all.

On Sunday I had lunch with someone I hadn't seen in seven years. He was the only person I'd ever gotten mad enough at to sever all ties and communication, and seeing him was a nearly out-of-body experience, like I was watching us talking as opposed to actually being there. The answer to the question "How have you been?" contained things like, "Well, after high-school I went to Florida and got a degree, and then I came back and got a Bachelor's at Pitt." Usually that question has something to do with groceries and chores or the events of the day, but in this context we were talking about four-year chunks of life that had passed. It's kind of scary, frankly, that you can update someone on yourself with such brevity, compressing seven years into seven minutes with nary a blink. I felt very big and very small at the same. But it was a good meeting. A healing. I was proud of myself for calling him up.

I wish I had faster fingers. There are so many little moments I want to preserve here, and the thought of documenting them all is dreamy and exhausting. In the interests of science, I've found a way to blog from work. I know some of you just groaned, but I find anything that is wrong and subversive to be highly arousing. No one would know I'm blogging. They'd just see a typing man, looking intent upon making sense of out something, which is what they want to see. It's no different than what I do all day, frankly, save that the job of being wholly myself involves significantly less list-making. We shall see...

Your,
Martin

Thursday, November 01, 2007

He Chose.... Poorly

So I am concerned about how rapidly old I've gotten in three days. Did I drink from the wrong cup?

The Evidence:

  • The highlight of the week was learning that I get to go to bed at midnight instead of 11:30. For some reason, this is a huge deal.

  • Today, I had time to go to Home Depot and get a lamp for my desk. The satisfaction derived from how much this light-source will improve my office experience is not commensurate with the value of this lamp.

  • Jessie and I spend at least an hour a day complaining about being tired.

  • I found a way to use the word "commensurate" in a sentence.

  • I created this list with actual HTML code instead of with any buttons.

  • This blog post is the shortest one in months.


In other news, I got a $40 ticket from the State of Delaware for being unable to pay a $4 fare.

An Open Letter to Delaware:

Dear Delaware,

What the hell is wrong with you? All I wanted to do was get out of your sorry excuse for a state. Obviously in order to stem the exodus of decent, hard-working Americans from your sociofacist demonocracy, you've chosen to pave your highways in the blood of taxpayers.

I don't know how you found me in Virginia, nor to what end your demonic powers toil, but fuck, man, get a life. It was $4. Get over yourself. You are not a cool state. You are something I drive through to get somewhere else. I would rather go to New Jersey. In fact, I drove THROUGH you to get to New Jersey. You're not even the pussy. You're the LEAKY CONDOM through which I wriggled on my way to the dank recesses of Jersey.

I hope you sink a body of black water.

Love,
Martin